India's largest A&M festival, ‘Goafest’ kicks off today

Mumbai: The three-day advertising and marketing symposium of India, Goafest 2024, will begin today at The Westin, Powai, Mumbai.

While last year’s theme of the ad fest was ‘Future of Creativity’, this year it is ‘The Age of Adaptability’.

During the three days, delegates attending the Goafest will witness various knowledge seminars and masterclasses. The festival will host over 50 speakers and entertainers across 20+ sessions, in addition to 15+ masterclasses.

The evenings shall see creative excellence honoured at the Abby One Show Awards. 

This year, the total number of entries for the 55th edition of the Abby Awards 2024 Powered by One Show has surpassed last year’s number of 3,301, reaching 3,506. Media agencies submitted 1,258 entries this year compared to 1,019 last year, and creative agencies submitted 2,248 entries this year compared to 2,282 last year, the organisers told BestMediaInfo.com.

Even the number of participating agencies has increased from 63 in 2023 to 73 this year, they added.

Goafest 2024 content line-up

The festival will kick off with keynotes from industry leaders. The opening session, titled Adapt To Thrive Not Just Survive, will witness Harit Nagpal, Managing Director and CEO of Tata Play, emphasise on the importance of adaptability as a key to thriving rather than merely surviving. Following this, an insightful session on Navigating The Age Of Adaptability by Sanjiv Mehta, Executive Chairman of L Catterton India, will explore the essential components of leading with vision, flexibility, and purpose in today's rapidly evolving market landscape.

Additionally, Tarun Puri, Senior Operating Partner at Lighthouse Funds; Asha Kharga, Chief Customer and Brand Officer at Mahindra Group; Raymond Lifestyle’s Sunil Kataria; Maruti Suzuki’s Shashank Srivastava; Nestle’s Chandan Mukherjee; Tata Motors’ Shubhranshu Singh; The Good Glamm Group’s Sukhleen Aneja; Honasa’s Zairus Master; and Darshana Shah from Aditya Birla Capital, among others, will engage in conversations and discussions.

Other speakers include Marcus Ranney, Manoj Bajpayee, Sourav Ganguly, Zeenat Aman, Vikrant Massey, Medha Shankar, Neha Dhupia, Tahira Kashyap, and Neelesh Misra.

This year, Goafest has entered into a strategic partnership with D&AD to curate skill development masterclasses.

Last year, over 2,000 delegates attended the event, as opposed to 1,600 in 2022. This year, the number is expected to go up even higher.

Abby Awards 2024

On Day 1, Publisher and Media Abby winners will be announced. On day 2, Broadcaster, Public Relations, Design, Direct, Technology, Digital & Digital Craft and Mobile Abbys will be announced. 

Day 3 will see Video Craft, Audio, Branded Content & Entertainment, Green Award, Brand Activation & Promotion, Diversity, Equality & Inclusion, Out of Home (Ambient Media), Still Print & Still Craft, Still Digital, Audio-Visual, TV, Cinema, Digital, OTT (Below 1 min duration), Audio-Visual, TV, Cinema, Digital, OTT (1 min and above), Integrated, Young Maverick Abby Award, Health Abby & Red Abby winners list announced.

The returning agencies to Abby’s include Lowe Lintas, McCann Worldgroup India, DDB Mudra, and Famous Innovations, among others.

In 2022, the Abby Awards partnered with One Show to add an additional layer of global standards of judging, jury selection, and transparency to the awards. The partnership continues to date, making the jury process stringent, along with KPMG being the independent auditor on board.

Supporting Goafest 2024 as the ‘Co-presenting’ partner is Snapchat along with WhatsApp as the ‘Technology Partner’, and Hindustan Times as the ‘Digital Partner.’

Nearly 50 brands and platforms have partnered with Goafest 2024 for various integrations. The fest has onboarded brands including Tata Motors, Mondelez, ITC Foods, Britannia, Guinness World Records, NoBroker, and MakeMyTrip, to platforms like ShareChat, Sony Liv, Flipkart Ads, Amazon Ads, Spotify, MiQ, The Trade Desk and Whisper Media.

Goafest 2024 will also host the second edition of its talent showcase, ‘Advertising Rocks’. Additionally, there will be performances by Sukhwinder Singh and Harshdeep Kaur, as well as an After Hours Party each day.